The Most Controversial Idea In Physics

In 1953, the astronomer, Fred Hoyle, had a problem . He was studying how stars make different elements in their cores , and he realized that there is much more carbon in the universe than there should be . Stars fuse hydrogen into helium and then helium into beryllium 8 . That part is chill , but to get carbon, you need to fuse three helium nuclei together . But, beryllium 8 is really unstable . It falls apart in about 10 to the negative 16th of a second . That's 1 10 quadrillionth of a second . So, the third helium nucleus has to fuse with the beryllium in that fraction of a second . And when you run the numbers, the reaction is far too slow . So, according to nuclear physics, stars should make almost no carbon . But, clearly they do